[linux] More elegant "ps aux | grep -v grep"

When I check list of processes and 'grep' out those that are interesting for me, the grep itself is also included in the results. For example, to list terminals:

$ ps aux  | grep terminal
user  2064  0.0  0.6 181452 26460 ?        Sl   Feb13   5:41 gnome-terminal --working-directory=..
user  2979  0.0  0.0   4192   796 pts/3    S+   11:07   0:00 grep --color=auto terminal

Normally I use ps aux | grep something | grep -v grep to get rid of the last entry... but it is not elegant :)

Do you have a more elegant hack to solve this issue (apart of wrapping all the command into a separate script, which is also not bad)

You could use preg_split instead of explode and split on [ ]+ (one or more spaces). But I think in this case you could go with preg_match_all and capturing:

preg_match_all('/[ ]php[ ]+\S+[ ]+(\S+)/', $input, $matches);
$result = $matches[1];

The pattern matches a space, php, more spaces, a string of non-spaces (the path), more spaces, and then captures the next string of non-spaces. The first space is mostly to ensure that you don't match php as part of a user name but really only as a command.

An alternative to capturing is the "keep" feature of PCRE. If you use \K in the pattern, everything before it is discarded in the match:

preg_match_all('/[ ]php[ ]+\S+[ ]+\K\S+/', $input, $matches);
$result = $matches[0];

I would use preg_match(). I do something similar for many of my system management scripts. Here is an example:

$test = "user     12052  0.2  0.1 137184 13056 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust1 cron
user     12054  0.2  0.1 137184 13064 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust3 cron
user     12055  0.6  0.1 137844 14220 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust4 cron
user     12057  0.2  0.1 137184 13052 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust89 cron
user     12058  0.2  0.1 137184 13052 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust435 cron
user     12059  0.3  0.1 135112 13000 ?        Ss   10:00   0:00 php /home/user/public_html/utilities/runProcFile.php cust16 cron
root     12068  0.0  0.0 106088  1164 pts/1    S+   10:00   0:00 sh -c ps aux | grep utilities > /home/user/public_html/logs/dashboard/currentlyPosting.txt
root     12070  0.0  0.0 103240   828 pts/1    R+   10:00   0:00 grep utilities";

$lines = explode("\n", $test);

foreach($lines as $line){
        if(preg_match("/.php[\s+](cust[\d]+)[\s+]cron/i", $line, $matches)){
                print_r($matches);
        }

}

The above prints:

Array
(
    [0] => .php cust1 cron
    [1] => cust1
)
Array
(
    [0] => .php cust3 cron
    [1] => cust3
)
Array
(
    [0] => .php cust4 cron
    [1] => cust4
)
Array
(
    [0] => .php cust89 cron
    [1] => cust89
)
Array
(
    [0] => .php cust435 cron
    [1] => cust435
)
Array
(
    [0] => .php cust16 cron
    [1] => cust16
)

You can set $test to equal the output from exec. the values you are looking for would be in the if statement under the foreach. $matches[1] will have the custx value.